Dub Thompson

Take the 101 north out of Los Angeles, and you'll pass by Agoura Hills, where the core duo of the band Dub Thompson grew up. Whatever you see in that town won't readily prepare you for the music they wrote while there, but you're free to look.

"Most everyone who's in a group who's our age lives on the Internet," says guitarist Matt Pulos. "The kinds of things that have shaped our band aren't anchored to any one time or place."

Pulos and his bandmate, drummer Evan Laffer, are currently both 19 years old, and are putting that line of thought to the test; their musical influences travel from the Midwestern malaise of Big Black and Pere Ubu, to Kraut pioneers Can and Kraftwerk, while bowing to the British belligerence of The Fall and This Heat.

Recorded while living with Foxygen's Jonathan Rado at his rented house in Bloomington, the band had its first taste of a heavy Indiana summer, and all the humidity and insect life that buzzes along with it. "We woke up every day, hard-boiled eggs and stood on a porch," says Pulos of the experience.Their first collection of songs slyly unties the shoes of genre and convention, shapeshifts mischievously, and tramples on the promises delivered on the name itself.

The vibes are strong here. Pulos sings and plays like he's working out long-standing grudges, pulling the most sinewy tones from an acoustic guitar and ripping huge chunks of demon flesh out of his electric. Laffer matches him step for step on the drums, an exacting presence behind the kit who pushes even the band's more placid moments into bouts of tension. Together they succeed in animating their musical ideas to startling, almost unnatural life. Reverb units, keyboards, samples and processing gluing everything together, saturated in the August heat and worn in until they sound second nature, it's like somehow you've been listening to these songs forever.
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Today Dub Thompson‘s new album 9 songs is out worldwide! The band, Matt Pulos on guitar and Evan Laffer on drums, recorded the album with Foxygen‘s Jonathan Rado at a rented house here in our hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. With no one song on the album the same, the two simultaneously draw from many predecessors including Can and Kraftwerk, Big Black, Pere Ubu, and more.

In honor of the release we are letting the band take over @DeadOceans on Twitter all today. To follow “Dub Oceans” click here.

“There is so much going on here — old-school funk, the Red Hot Chili Peppers before they sucked, Tame Impala, Kraut, trip-hop beats, convenience store muzak, old psychedelic records in the dollar bin at your local record store”

- Flavorwire

“throat-grabbing, shit-kicking intensity”

- Line of Best Fit

“It’s an impressive bit of music that hints at the band’s scrappy inhibition, and its allure all but comes from how unserious Dub Thompson take themselves”